Tag: Sculpture

While I was in Venice I had the chance to visit the Marc Quinn Exhibition on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. It was a solo exhibition and there were sculptures as well as paintings by Quinn. I found the sculptures and their expressiveness fascinating. Also the way he “discusses” the way we perceive gender roles or people with some body defect (while visiting the exhibition I didn’t know the sculptures were of actual people, except one that I recognised). The sculptures also explore what beauty is in association with classical Greek and Roman sculpture, that idealise the human body in its perfection. The people represented in the sculptures stood with pride and dignity and having an amputated leg or arm didn’t make any difference. They really felt beautiful and very elegant. Knowing that many, maybe all of them, are of actual people is a little bit frightening, out of ones comfort zone. For example, “Breath” made after “Alison Lapper Pregnant” represents the actual contemporary artist Alison Lapper, who was born without arms and with truncated legs. Knowing that these people are real makes it closer and more frightening. In daily life we don’t think about it, we automatically forget that there are people with different bodies and that we are not more human than them. The so called “disability” is something we normally hide, we don’t talk about it, we try not to see it. These sculptures make it unmistakeably visible and in some way become a monument. From this point of view Quinn’s works are very brave, controversial and a little bit scary.

The installation “Evolution”, consisting of ten marble sculptures representing the development of the human embryo, was arranged specifically for the site, as thou life emerges out of the Venetian Laguna.

“What I depict is ordinary scenes in everyday life.However,for the character painted in my work,that scenery is very special.”

The Gallery Yukari Art shows online three new work by Japanese artist Shintaro Ohata. As always, I am fascinated by the way how he combines paintings and sculpture and his sense of lighting. His works feel very fragile and personal. More on yukari-art.jp.

It would be nice to be in Tokyo right now. The Yukari Art Gallery exhibits works of Shintaro Ohata – a contemporary painter and sculptor with a great sence for light. Ohata wanted to give his paintings more dynamics and decided to put sculptures in front of them. The effect is a manga-like realism in front of your eyes.

meine kleine Kunstgeschichte

Visiting smaller, lesser known late antique churches on a Saturday afternoon is not the brightest idea for the simple reason that… people tend to get married on Saturday. Since I’ve been in Rome for my Erasmus Semester for some time know, I decided to visit one of the earliest Christian monuments in Rome, depicting some […]

Mona Lisa has become the synonym for “great”, “magnificent”, “sublime” art. Mona Lisa’s smile lives a life on its own. Everybody has heard of this painting, nowadays everybody knows how it looks like (for more on that topic check Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). Why? It is in […]

The series about Suleiman the Magnificent on Extra History just started a few days ago, this time with a slightly different story telling approach but just as appealing, telling the story of his reign in an accurate (or at least so it seems) and entertaining way, inspiring further interest. That’s the way history needs to be […]